Ideally, you would want a landscape company that practices a landscape management approach, one that fluidly toggles between detailed garden care, preventive hardscape maintenance, and landscape equipment maintenance. Why? Because an outdoor environment is composed of both “living” and mechanical systems that must work seamlessly together to bring out the best in your landscape.
So when does it make sense to look for a company that takes this overall management approach? Perhaps you’ve outgrown your current landscape maintenance company. They’ve been dependable and have always done a good job but they only operate comfortably within a limited range of services. They don’t seem to have the resources or expertise to deliver the detailed lawn and garden care that you want to see when you step into your yard. Meanwhile, you still have to contract separately with other companies to maintain your water feature or pond filtration equipment and to monitor the irrigation system.
One Company – One Point of Contact
Your outdoor environment is composed of horticultural elements (lawn, plants, shrubs, trees), structural elements (patios, walkways) and mechanical systems (irrigation, water features). All deserve expert care and attention.
A company that offers an all-in-one garden management approach to landscape maintenance and garden care has the built-in capacity and versatility to do it all. It has trained personnel who are organized around completing multiple tasks on multiple levels with great attention to detail.
Distinctive benefits of having one company manage all your landscape systems are:
1 Accountability
Your landscape company assigns one person to manage your property. That person is responsible for all aspects of your outdoor environment and oversees the landscaping crew that takes care of it. A top-notch garden manager is invested in the success of your gardens and landscape.
2 Partnership
You will develop a partnership with a garden manager who ideally will be a certified horticulturist. That person will be your single point of contact and go-to person for everything outside. The garden manager listens to your preferences and communicates them to the landscape technicians to ensure a consistent level of care and maintenance. So, you only have to explain things once to that one person.
3 Attentiveness
The garden manager and crew are, in addition to completing scheduled tasks, always assessing the condition of the lawn and plantings. They check for signs of stress that could, for example, indicate a need to increase or decrease irrigation. They will notice if a light fixture has been knocked over or burned out and fix it.
4 Design Savvy
The best garden managers are sensitive to what the landscape designer had in mind and is able to instruct the technicians on how to treat your plants and trees to fulfill that design vision to your standards. This translates into the opposite of a “one-size-fits-all” program: a garden management program is customized to address the individual needs of the different plant varieties and landscape support systems at the right times during the growing season.
At a standard landscape maintenance company, you will typically be assigned a client account manager. That person may not possess horticultural expertise and may not necessarily be involved in weekly care. Typically, an account manager tends to focus on new sales and upgrades to existing contracts. And once your maintenance program is up and running they hand off to the weekly maintenance crews.
One Size Fits Some
Many landscape maintenance companies send out separate crews that specialize in a prescribed set of tasks–and they only do those. It ends up being a sort of one size fits all approach. That can work perfectly well for some customers but not all.
It is understandable why a larger company might take this approach because it keeps costs down by facilitating volume delivery of services quickly. However, that efficiency can come at the cost of attention to details that fall outside of a narrowly prescribed set of tasks.
There is another way to calculate efficiency aside from speed and volume. That way is simplicity. It is efficient and effective to deal with one company that sends the same crew every time to deliver coordinated care for your plants and your landscape systems (irrigation, water features) that altogether contribute to a healthy landscape.
One Landscape Management Company Does It All
If you were to use two companies–one for garden care and another for irrigation maintenance–those people may not be talking to each other. So, if your gardeners notice a change in moisture requirements, their observation may not be communicated the irrigation people in a timely manner.
Even if your yard is somewhat small, if you’ve invested in specimen plantings and gone out of your way to make it beautiful, you obviously care about those plants. You care about having that beautiful scene to relax in. You don’t want to risk what you have to less than optimum care. A full-service landscape management company will deliver the benefit of fine gardening techniques plus the technical expertise needed for calibrating and maintaining your garden support systems.
Are you wondering how to bring out the fullest expression in your landscape and gardens? Our eBook: Choosing the Right Kind of Landscape Maintenance Firm, is full of valuable information to help you understand the fundamental differences between landscape maintenance companies.